Remote locking

I remember the first car my parents had with remote locking - when you locked it, the horn/alarm made one noise, and when you unlocked it it made a slightly different noise. As far as I recall, there was a short period when a lot of cars did that, but that was a decade or so ago, and now we have reached a point where it's widely considered to be annoying and intrusive to have your car honking away every time you lock it. That message does not seem to have reached the US yet - every time someone comes in late or leaves early, you hear the sound of a car horn beeping away to let not just the person who owns the car, but everyone else in the vicinity know that the car is locked and the alarm is set. In a country where honking seems to be used as a substitute for braking, waiting, indicating and almost any other form of activity you can perform in a car, it's also quite off-putting to have every recently locked car honking away as you drive down the street, try to park outside a shop or just fill your car with petrol, and why anyone would need to draw so much attention to the fact they have an alarm is beyond me.

The alarm is another excessively overblown event - when one goes off you get a succession of different but equally annoying alarm sounds which play themselves on rotation until someone shuts it off. I have no idea why it should be deemed necessary that one alarm sound isn't enough, but from what we've heard, a loop of different beeps, whoops and two-tone wails is the absolute minimum required to draw attention to the commission of a crime. They like things loud here, and nothing short of eardrum damage will do.

Things that make me gag

1. Thinking too hard about gagging

2. Brushing my tongue

3. Seeing someone else's spit

4. Seeing my own spit

5. Cleaning out a plughole

6. Having hair on me, even my own - once it's no longer attached to my head, it's fair game

7. Seeing someone else gag

8. Hearing someone else gag

9. Writing lists about gagging

You know what, screw it - it might be quicker to make a list of things that don't make me gag, given my irrationally sensitive gag reflex, which I believe is a direct inheritance from my Mum (not the good figure, not the strong nails or lovely teeth - no, I get the gag reflex!). Should I ever wish to become a sword swallower, I'll be absolutely screwed.

Coffee, tea and me

I remember when I was at primary school, several of my friends already drank tea but I wasn't really offered tea by my parents, so I always thought I would just grow into drinking it. The first time I had a cup of coffee was when I was 17 and I figured maybe I was just on the cusp of beginning to like things like that. When I went to work in my gap year I decided to take the plunge and drink tea with a vengeance and drank about 8 cups a day at my desk. I'm not entirely sure why as I still thought that tea tasted like dirty hot water, albeit still infinitely preferable to coffee, but I liked having an excuse to get up from my desk as I frequently nearly dozed off whilst working and everyone else worked really hard while I mostly did filing and telling people on the phone to try unplugging their computer and plugging it in again, so I was glad to have something to contribute to the team.

But now I'm nearly 30 and an reaching the conclusion that I am not going to grow in to liking tea or coffee, and something about that makes me feel as though I'm not a proper grown up. If I need help to cope with a hangover, I have to rely on Lucozade (infuriatingly unavailable in the US) and there's nothing to perk me up if I start the day a little sluggishly. Admittedly, when I try to talk to the Boy Wonder before he's had his coffee and he is incapable of forming a coherent sentence, I do feel a little pleased that I am not a reliant on caffeine as he is to live a normal life, but I still can't shake the feeling that I've bypassed a milestone of adulthood somehow.

The advertising jingle

Tragically, in the UK, the advertising jingle seems to have suffered a demise - there are occasional forays into the world of musical ads, but they are often pastiches of the traditional jingle, and whilst they are sometimes funny, they don't really have the charm that the classic jingles of my childhood had.

The US however, seems to have an non ironic love of the advertising jingle which is very appealing. One my current favourites is 'Never paint your house again' which is an ad for a ceramic house covering which will apparently last forever but the innovative nature of the substance is completely belied by the weird 80s rising jingle which sound like a child made it up in two seconds, which makes is surprisingly charming.

There's a spectacular one for a bartending school (which is a concept I enjoy anyway) which is a sung list of a load of different cocktails - who can resist a jingle about a Fuzzy Navel?

I also just heard one for a cheque cashing service which had a high octane female lead vocal jingle which sounded more like something for a fast food restaurant than a service which allows people to slip gradually behind their incomes over a course of months - "The only original, uniquely individual, One-stop money shop - check into cash".

French bread lies

The food here in Louisiana surpasses any other food we've had in the US - New York is kind of a mish mash, with excellent diners that serve a massive range of good food, but it's all much of a muchness and not that different from what you could get at home, albeit not 24/7 and not all in one place. Louisiana, however, has gumbo, red beans and rice, andouille sausage which the Boy Wonder informs me is delicious and they use pork as a seasoning, which shows impressive dedication to eating well. They owe a lot of their fantastic cuisine to the slew of cultures which have melded here, and the French influence is particularly evident as they have taken to heart the French love of rich food, with scant regard for the effects of trans-fats on the body.

And, as the local TV station keeps informing us, they also love French bread, which they sell in long, baguette style loaves almost everywhere that you can buy bread. They use it for po-boys - the unhealthily massive sandwiches which they stuff with more fillings than one person should eat in a sitting - and serve it with their delicious gumbo. However, the use of the term 'French' to describe their bread is a complete misnomer - it simply isn't French bread, I've been to France. I've wanted to move there just to eat bread and cheese for the rest of my (admittedly probably cut short by cholesterol poisoning) life. We've come home with loaves and loaves of French bread in the hope of defrosting it to its former glory to recreate the deliciousness of the experience. What they call 'French' bread here is just bread - sometimes it's ok, sometimes it's pretty bad, but it's never crusty, never has any of the fantastic soft inside and almost mouth hurtingly crusty outside. It's just bread, and given that you can't even export French flour because the French are so proud of their bread, I think they are stretching their definition of 'French' to describe their floppy, quick drying attempts at French bread. None of their bread is crusty - since we've been here we have searched every supermarket and food establishment we have entered for bread that has anything remotely resembling a crust, and it simply doesn't exist.

I love the food here - I have been more adventurous with my choices than ever before, which even extends to eating an oyster the other day (although it was fried and barely distinguishable from any other fried food in that sense), but their stretching of the definition of French bread is something with which I simply cannot get to grips.

Phantom toe-post syndrome

Having worn flip flops for between 7 and 12 hours a day for the last week or so, I have noticed a slightly disturbing phenomenon whenever we get home and I release my feet - I can still feel the toe-post in between my big and second toes. I'm not sure when I first noticed it, but once I had, I started to notice it more and more and now I'v started thinking about it I'm noticing it all the time. I'm not sure whether it's a recognised syndrome, but I'm definitely putting it on the list of things to ask a medical based scientist drunk enough that I feel comfortable asking them stupid questions like this and whether there's a physiological reason why the Boy Wonder's tongue gets brightly coloured when within sniffing distance of artificially coloured food or drink, yet mine stays resolutely tongue coloured despite the fact that I like it when my tongue goes an unnatural shade of pink.

Toothpaste and tequila

One of the things to which we have become accustomed over the last five days of jazz fest is the glorious taste of toothpaste and tequila. This is largely due to the inspirational placement of a frozen daquiri tent right by the entrance where we arrive at the fairgrounds, by also owes a nod to the incredible humidity that makes the 20 minute walk from our apartment to the festival a sweaty affair and one which demands almost instant refreshment. Beer wouldn't really hit the spot, but a mixture of margarita and 'N'awlins punch', which is mostly pink coloured rum, makes for a perfect arrival drink, and on occasion good road drink for the walk home.

So far, I have managed to balance perfectly on the line between dehydration and the need to use one of the portaloos on site. However, we have discovered that there are proper, permanent toilets in the grandstand which is somewhat of a relief and means that I have been able to make free with the beer without having to face my fear of plastic toilet facilities. Yet another reason why jazz fest is so much more civilised than any other festival I've been to.